I’m no economist…but I did sleep in a Holiday Inn last night…[:o)]
Isn’t the “more water” the fact that the world’s population is growing?
Captain Kirk’s replicator is not yet reality. Like Captain Kirk called the Enterprise, we now call home on a cell phone.
Watch old newsreels of flight control surfaces (fins) being fitted on the assembly line to new DeSotos. An army of men repeat their tasks like piston rods. Watch a video of an auto assembly line online. Your streaming video shows a line of robots repeating their tasks like piston rods.
Like agriculture before it, manufacturing is taking less labor per unit produced.
As automation advances, labor could become such a small part of price that it is largely decoupled from the cost of production. Assuming labor leaves the equation, what happens to the location of production and in turn the demand for transportation?
But robots don’t buy cars…
Granted the people that fix them, do… but how many of them are there vs. assembly line workers? Is there ever a point where we cross the line and over-automate? And don’t we learn anything from movies… you know the robots will rise up against us some day.
I believe Mr. Marx figured that the desire to eliminate labor will lead to labor eliminating capitalists.
You are no fun. Fact sure do have a way of getting in the way of righteous indignation!
So, the standard of living in the US went up between 1860 and 1960 because we took it all out of someone else’s hide? The industrial revolution produced no net gain? That is what you are saying…
It becomes: “where are the raw materials and where is the market” …again.
Good thing. More for us. then.
If you automate 80% of everyone’s job, then we only have to work one day a week to earn a whole week’s pay. Same total economic output with only 20% of the effort. (It’s how we got from the 6x12 work week to the 5x8 work week)
Or, if you automate 80% of everyone’s job and everyone works 5 days a week, then the economic output grows X5 and we all can have five times the stuff we have now.
It’s a really simple economic evaluation. When the cost to own and operate the machine < the cost to hire manual labor, you automate, if not you don’t.
Do you own a powered lawn mower? Why?
That’s if you are one of the lucky few to have a job… and you assume that the workers will actually reap some benefits. Your numbers look great in economic text books - but you forget about variable “g”.
Greed.
Let’s just stop employing people… I bet it will be all roses and sunshine. And maybe rainbows will shoot out my ahh… I’ll stop now.
Sorry sir, but I am a realist. Or pessimist - same thing.
If only everything was that simple…
You’re assuming there’s only a limited amount of work to be done…more automation will free up people to work in other areas that cannot be automated…This will require a more educated work force as jobs that cannot be automated easily require something robots can’t do well…the ability to think. That may not be such a bad thing as few of us aspire to work in boring repetitive jobs anyway.
So where are these other areas now? Lots of people are free now. I just don’t see the huge increase of jobs - maybe I’m loking in the wrong spots?
And education - yeah, who is going to pay for that?
Once again zug, I agree with you. Based on history, why would anyone believe that if even only 50% of the work were automated, all the workers would still get the same pay as before? Probably 50% would lose their jobs or else the company would demand give-backs to “save” those jobs.
I have a powered lawn mower. I also have an unpowered, reel type lawn mower tucked away in the shed. Neither are self-propelled or self-navigating. They both require an operator to function. When I upgraded to the powered version, I didn’t permanently displace anyone. I’m not even sure that it cut (no pun intended) the time to mow the lawn by that much, but that may be due to the operator, too.
There’s an excellent Twilight Zone episode about automating factories. I don’t remember the title. The short of it was the guy who pushed for automation thought it great, until his job was also eliminated. I guess that’s what it comes down to. If you work, as do most of us, in a job that could be automated or outsourced you worry about it. If you work in a job that would be hard to automate or outsource, you don’t see the problem with that.
Beware though, just like the guy in the TV episode, there’s few jobs that can’t be either automated, outsourced, or replaced by cheaper labor.
Jeff
And training for other jobs, requiring a college or technical degree just isn’t the answer for everybody. We (as a nation) have lost a lot of jobs that used to provide a living for many folks. Not everybody can be a computer whiz, etc. and a lot of those jobs have been off-shored to India, etc. And some folk’s talents are with their hands and have a difficult time in the classroom. Just what are we doing for them?
But hey, as long as the Walmart stockholders are happy, we’re supposed to be happy too , right?[*-)]
The “education” pot of gold. That’s the answer to everything anymore. A 4-yr college degree doesn’t even have the weight it once did. Now you need a master’s… doctorate… multiple degrees (oh yeah, and experience somewhere).
We also have lots of people that could better contribute more to society if they were in another line of work. We all know people that we when we see them we wonder: “why are they wasting their talent here?” But “here” is where they have a paycheck and health insurance for their families. Yeah, we like to think of breaking free to get an education and a new career - but most responsible people just can’t fathom doing that.
Sure, if you are unemployed - you don’t have much to lose, but if you are employed - you risk it all.
I speak from personal experience. I had another employee tell me once “Tom, the best thing that could happen to you is that you get FIRED. Then you’d be forced to do something with your life.”
He has a point.
As long as we can fill our carts with cheap crap we don’t need…
Although I don’t think the walmart stockholders are too happy… seems they are too expensive any more.
Won’t work that way. What will happen is that (in your example) they will lay off 80% of the work force, convert all remaining positions except a handful to non-benefit accruing part time positions, and the stockholders will pocket the margin